Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher unveils Poe-inspired episode titles – and fans are already trying to work out what they mean

Warning! This article contains spoilers for several of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories. (Though we'd argue that you had 180 years...). 

Netflix appears to have unveiled each episode title for Mike Flanagan's upcoming horror series The Fall of the House of Usher, and fans are already trying to work out what they mean. Perhaps, most importantly though, whether they hold potential plot clues to the eagerly anticipated series, too...

According to Mike Flanagan Source, a Twitter account dedicated to the filmmaker's works, the first and last episodes are called A Midnight Dreary and The Raven, which are clearly references to Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven. The other installments, however, are each named after separate short stories by Poe: The Masque of the Red Death, Murder in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, Goldbug, and The Pit and the Pendulum. 

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Like with The Haunting of Hill House, which was based on Shirley Jackson's novel of the same name, The Haunting of Bly Manor, which found inspiration in Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, and The Midnight Club, which adapted Christopher Pike's young adult series, The Fall of the House of Usher is clearly not a straight retelling of Poe's literature.

Published in 1842, The Masque of the Red Death follows a character called Prince Prospero, as he attempts to avoid a dangerous plague by hiding in his abbey. To quell his sense of isolation, Prospero throws a masquerade ball for his wealthy peers, but dies after an encounter with a mysterious guest dressed as a Red Death victim. All of the other guests die, too. We already know that Sauriyan Sapkota is set to play Prospero Usher in the show, which suggests he'll likely be the focus of episode 2, and that there's some kind of masquerade ball from the trailer.

Published one year earlier, in 1841, The Murders in the Rue Morgue sees detective C. Auguste Dupin – which is Carl Lumbly's character's name in the show – attempt to get to the bottom of two women's strange demises. The women in question? Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter Camille, and considering that Kate Siegel's character in The Fall of the House of Usher is called Camille L'Espanaye, we can make an educated guess as to this being her episode. (In Poe's version of the story, the victims were killed by a Bornean orangutan).

Next, there's The Black Cat, which was published in 1843 and centers on an animal lover who turns on his pets one day. Things go from bad to worse when his favorite pet, a black cat, bites him, and he punishes it by cutting its eye out and then hanging it from a tree. The narrator replaces the cat, but finds himself with a similar disdain for the new one, too, and tries to kill it with an axe, despite his wife's protestations. In the end, the narrator winds up murdering his wife instead, and concealing her body behind a brick wall in their basement. Later, the police discover the corpse after hearing the cat crying from inside the crawl space. 

The Tell-Tale Heart, like The Black Cat, was published in 1843 and sees an unnamed narrator try to convince the reader of their sanity, all the while describing a murder that they themselves have committed. 

In that same year, Poe also released The Gold-Bug, a tale about a man called William Legrand, who becomes obsessed with an unusual-looking golden bug he has discovered. Worried, Legrand's servant Jupiter reaches out to one of his employer's old friends, which prompts a visit and, later, Legrand pulling the men into a search for buried treasure.

Lastly, there's The Pit and the Pendulum, which recounts the terrifying ordeal endured by a tortured prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition. It is one of Poe's few stories that doesn't revolve around the supernatural. As there are no characters named in this, The Tell-Tale Heart or The Black Cat, and The Gold-Bug follows someone who doesn't seem to appear in the show, it's a little harder to predict who might be the focus of those episodes in the series. (Rahul Kohli's Napoleon Usher, T'Nia Miller's Victorine Lafourcade, Samantha Sloyan's Tamerlane Usher, and Henry Thomas's Frederick Usher appear to have had their names lifted from other Poe works).

"I'm so excited. The more Poe the better," one fan wrote on Reddit, as another said: "OK gonna take a guess on the main character for each episode here - a few are obvious from the trailer but the rest is just me possibly being wrong: Masque of the Red Death - Prospero, Murder in the Rue Morgue - Victorine, The Black Cat - Napoleon, The Tell Tale Heart - Camille, Goldbug - Tamerlane, Pit and the Pendulum - Frederick."

The Fall of the House of Usher releases on October 12. While we wait, check out our list of the best Netflix shows for some viewing inspiration.